We arrive in Kyoto
While I had problems with the language, Josh had picked up several phrases seemingly overnight which was quite useful. Following this little video intro, Josh had approached a saleslady advertising chocolates and asked "Eigo o hanase mas ka?" (Do you speak English?). However, as this girl only came up to about Josh’s chest, she shrank back, obviously intimidated, shaking her head and attempted to hide her face. Not wishing to leave with such a bad impression, Josh made one more attempt asking where we could find an information desk. She immediately brightened, smiled broadly, then ran to a stairwell with Josh in pursuit. She crouched down to better point out a location down the stairway on the lower floor and indicated that we should go down there and to the right. As had become second nature to us, Josh politely bowed and thanked her for her trouble and we continued on our way.
Once again, just by randomly wandering around, we happened on what would become our "go to" place for meals while we stayed in Kyoto.
By the way, the exchange rate was around 1 dollar to 100 yen, so you can pretty much directly translate the prices into dollars. For example, the 450 above means about $4.50.We watched the patrons carefully to see how to order our meal. They would insert money into the vending machine and press one of two buttons at the top that Josh and I figured must mean dine-in or take-out. They would then make their selection and a cardboard ticket would drop out the dispenser. The customer would then hand the ticket to the cooks behind the counter. In a few minutes a waitress would bring the meal to your table. There was no need to select a beverage as the only thing available was all the green tea you could drink, which suited me fine.
We finally checked into our room. The hotel offered only cabled Ethernet so I set up my laptop as a wireless access point so we could connect via our handhelds. This let us check our email, text chat, etc. Despite our plans to sample the Kyoto nightlife, we once again crashed and burned early due to the jetlag. And once again we woke up around 2 AM hungry so we walked down to the vending machine restaurant to have a late night meal.
Click here to move on to our first tour day in Kyoto:
http://phoenixanime.org/Japan-2008/Our-first-day-in-Kyoto/